this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
102 points (94.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43962 readers
1418 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oil industry lobbyists are a bitch, eh?
It wasn't just them, or the auto manufacture lobbyists that were probably more powerful at the time. There was also the influence of slightly older conspicuous consumption, so suburban lots were designed to look like mini country estates, and generally the re-emphasis of connection with the outdoors and nature that came in the midcentury. Plus, if it's a totally new neighborhood, you can keep minorities out from the start.
It seems designers thought people in suburbs would, like, be close friends with everyone on the cul-de-sac, and they'd spend all weekend chilling outdoors and having barbecues. Maybe make one giant croquet course all down the street. Instead, you barely know your immediate neighbor's names, and anyone two doors down is under suspicion of being a violent criminal.
To be fair, they aren't the first or last designers to fundamentally misunderstand how the public will interact with the infrastructure; that's still a source of surprises today. I just wish we had changed course as soon as the truth became clear.
I thought we were talking about inner city planning, but yeah, suburbs are the flip side to the same coin.